How Might We Align Sports Innovation With Leadership and Trust

Welcome to How Might We Align Sports Innovation With Leadership and Trust, the podcast that explores bold questions at the intersection of leadership, innovation, and trust. In this episode, we’re diving into a powerful question: How might we align sports innovation with leadership and trust?

Joining me are two exceptional guests bringing insight from two very different—but deeply connected—worlds. Dr. Beatrice Constandache is a specialist in sports medicine with a career spanning elite athletics, Olympic-level performance, and cutting-edge research into energy, emotion, and innovation in sport. She is currently a member of the medical committee of the International Association of Ultrarunners and founder of the Luce Innovations Medical Academy.

Also with us is Geoff Hudson Searle, an international bestselling author and seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in design-led innovation and trust-based leadership. Geoff brings deep business insight and a compelling vision for how human intelligence, collaboration, and emotional connection can transform both teams and organisations.

Together, we explore what business can learn from elite sport—from team culture, emotional intelligence, and resilience, to the power of energy, empathy, and trust. It’s a wide-ranging conversation that challenges conventional thinking and offers a fresh take on high performance—on and off the field.

 

Dr. Beatrice Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-beatrice-constandache-2650639b/

 

Geoff Hudson Searle Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffsearle/

 

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Transcript: This is AI generated and may contain errors

 

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of How Might We, in this episode is how might we Align sports innovation with Leadership and Trust? And I've got two guests with me today, one of my regular guests, which is Jeff Hudson Cell and a new guest, which is Dr. Beatrice. So welcome both of you to the podcast and would you like to introduce yourselves?

Who would like to go first? Thank you so much. Welcome. Thank you so much. My Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Ris Constantia. I am a sports medicine specialist with experience in rugby medicine, athletics, medicine. I've worked with Olympic athletes and now I am currently a member in the medical committee of Ultra Running International Association.

And I founded the Loose Innovations Medical Academy currently [00:01:00] supporting the elite athletes and sports medicine to bring up the innovations in in this area. Okay, lovely. Thank you very much. It'll be, and Jeffrey, would you like to Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Jeff Hudson, sell 30 years plus global international seasoned executive in independent non-executive director for the last 20 years, around two separate businesses in the UK specializing in consultancy growth and design led innovation and trust.

I'm an author of seven books, sorry, international bestselling author of seven books and public thought leader and speaker. Okay. We could, we've gotta get the international bestselling, haven't we? We can't. We're just not bestselling. We are in, we're Global. We remember. You remember that was what I was saying to Oak when we spoke last round.

Yes, I remember that from Oak. Yeah. Hilarious. Hilarious. I was the only one who was not an author. So the whole list. So Dr. Beatrice, welcome and welcome to the podcast. [00:02:00] Thank you so much for having me. Oh, you're more than welcome. . So from your experience and obviously working through all the sports and bringing sports innovation, how do you think that would transpire into the business world and leadership?

I think that throughout the years I've saw the struggles of the athletes at the highest level of sports Yeah. And the medicine level also there . and I would like here to give the microphone, to Jeff

so to say overdue there, Jeffrey. Excellent. Thank you, sir. So I've got a couple of school of thoughts on this. Okay. So I have worked with sports professionals around the world. In fact, one of my very good friends was an NBA basketball championship. And he, when he left basketball, he transferred over to the business world and became a very successful c-suite executive in a Fortune 100 company a after his sports career.

So [00:03:00] I've had the chance to actually spend quality time with. True professionals from sports. I've also looked at sports coaching. So if I look at sports coaching that really innovated the world my favorite coach of all time is Vince Lombardi. And I, he was the most successful NFL coach in the world.

So successful that the rugby world particularly the All Blacks decided in their wisdom that they wanted to improve their percentage. They used the Lombardi methodology and no big surprise there was an 84% percentage win as a direct result of using the methodology and the techniques and the ideas.

Good friends of mine have written books on and around the mindset of sports professionals. Why mindset is so important and why innovation is so important. And I think that, we're constantly looking in leadership at the moment about, reinventing [00:04:00] leaders taking the possible to the impossible.

We're looking at, we're looking at very clever techniques around design-led innovation. We're looking very carefully at the way people behave in organizations. We've looked at touching on people, productivity, culture, psychological wellbeing. But one thing that sports professionals need to do cont consistently is they need to work as a team.

If they don't work as a team, they don't perform. And when you look at the business world, we're constantly looking at dissemination of people in organizations. We're constantly looking at separate businesses that don't communicate with one another. They don't collaborate with one another.

They don't speak and communicate in the way that you need to. , There's so many moving parts here, but the question I pose is that, with the clever things that.

Dr. Beatrice is doing right now, particularly on and around sports medicines. It's all linked to better [00:05:00] performance. I look at, I don't just look at sports, I look at the military and, if you heard Oakland when he spoke the last time we were on, honor, respect, trust it's a military, but in certain degrees of collaboration, you look at team sports and then you look at the business team.

But actually, I'd like to hear more about team sports. I've talked a lot about the business side and what I think the alignment is, but Beatrice has had direct.

Experience with this, and love to hear about some of her experiences in working across, looking and how do you prescribe new medicine? What is the research behind this? What's the alignment?

I think that'd be fascinating to hear. Jeff, I might, I must say I absolutely agree with your important aspect that you mentioned. In a team, in sports team, it's crucial to have this mindset, but from a empathic side of side of view. [00:06:00] Point of view. Why? Because we are humans. We all have emotions, whether we are women or men.

We both have this movement in our body that our emotions are energy in movement and not also we have to be energized on the field, but we need to control our emotions also. And who can do better than that? I think the doctor has the most important role to, to bring this up. And when a pa, when a athlete come, came to me I als al always tried not to see only the medical aspect but also the emotions that he had because a lot of a lot of athletes are dealing with emotions and nobody tells them how to deal with these emotions.

That's extremely important. Is emotional intelligence also in sports no one talks about. Yeah. And what you said that someone needs to collaborate, we need [00:07:00] human intelligence. Yes. Human emotional intelligence, that's another level. And that in in elite sports has some has some, not so great points. We need to come there also with resources. And there's a lot of, there's a lot to talk about also the innovations in this aspect as human approach. Not very few times have I seen the actions. Can I question on that? 'cause I think that's a really good conversation about what you bring up about emotional intelligence.

As an example. I'm not really sure how it works in a rugby team, but in NFL we, we have the quarterback, I imagine it's in rugby, it's the captain of the team. But you see the captain of the team in rugby or the quarterback in NFL, there, there's gonna be a game plan. Okay? There's a play. They have to make a play if they're not using their emotional intelligence and if they're not communicating, it doesn't matter how risky.

That play is that they're going to make [00:08:00] for to try and win the ball and actually go further down the field. Communication has to be vital because two things can happen, failure and lose the ball, or more importantly, have a severe injury which could take out team members as a direct result of taking something on that's too risky.

So that empathy, listening, collaboration, exactly has to ab is effectively a, an ethos within the team spirit because they have to be working together and believe in the captain and believe in whatever decision he's making for, on behalf of the team that it's right. And that's that, and that his view here is about winning at all costs.

Absolutely. And athletes when they come to compete, they have to forget everything. What they're going through. Their most important thing is winning on the field, and that does an Olympic athlete, Olympic team athlete. So that's what it takes to [00:09:00] be resilient, to have a high motivation and to thrive.

Whatever the conditions are the same for everybody, is just, some are winners and some cannot focus enough or so many reasons are there. But the inner emotional intelligence inner, coping factors. And that also can be be from having a good team doctor, a good team psychologist, and everyone in their surroundings must have the same mindset, must uplift the players, must uplift the athletes in whatever that takes.

That's why being at the so high level, it's important also the doctor to be also emotional intelligent. Not, I'm not talking about the medical curriculum that he has. Sure. Because every doctor has that and he's. Outstanding. But he needs to add on this a holistic approach, so to say.

Yeah, the emotional field, [00:10:00] the spiritual field, how, what the athlete wants, why is it important for him to win, why is it important for him to win this specific in, let's say in England? Why is that for him? Because when we define why is that important, then we can arrange every other aspect in his body or motivation because we need to dive deep in and we need to do that.

Having a compliance. The athletes in my regard they knew me for a long years. So they had trust in me. An athlete can trust someone who came for some little time. Yes. They need to build this confidence with you. And this this has helped me into build also the confidence that I needed for them to be, to recover from every inner injury.

And some of the times only my good words, my optimist the [00:11:00] ideal. The ideal words that they needed to hear at that specific moment, like emotional uplift. That meant for some more than just to tell them, okay, you have an injury, take this medicine, and that's it. They need also emotional empathy.

They need someone to be there to support them. Whether there's psychologist, the team psychologist, the team doctor, the coach. The coach is more technique, but some of the time the coaches are also involved in other aspects. And that's why when we go in you raised a huge point there because the the most grilling game that ever took place in NFL history was the Ice Bowl.

I dunno if you've heard of it. It was minus 40 degrees. It was Green Bay Packers versus the Dallas Cowboys. Unfortunately, Scott, there wasn't those luxurious pads in those days that you talked about. When you went over, you really went over and somehow. Vince Lombardi had to build the confidence and [00:12:00] say, you're gonna take that ball and you're gonna drill it across the line to win the game in minus 40.

And whether you've got the team together and you they're, they've got no energy. They're low, they're feeling it. It's minus sort and the snow's coming down. Exactly. You're gonna, you are taking that ball. You can do it, you're gonna drive it, you're gonna drill that ball straight into the red zone.

It's a hard thing to do, but you need to be as again. You could argue are these coaches superhuman? Because they need to know intimately each and every one of the players. They need to make sure that the players gel well in order to get the best out of them. And the best out of them is collaboration.

The best is teamwork. We used, you used two words earlier, which I love, and one was resilience and the other was trust. And and Scott and I have done a lot of work on that, but I see full transparency when you start talking about resiliency and trust, because without it, you don't have a team.

Can I just, something that's interesting because I've watched a video by Simon Serna and he talks about when he goes to the Navy seals. So I'd be interested in Dr. Beatrice, [00:13:00] your view of this from a team sport perspective. And he talks about the trust and performance grid. And the seals would say, I would prefer to have somebody's medium performance and high trust over high performance and low trust.

Exactly. Because. It comes to the mindset. Trust comes also from mindset. If and if you trust, if you have a companion, yeah. If you have someone you can trust, then you can rely on him. When your, let's say body comes low with energy, but the other one's energy, the other one's trust the other one's level of energy and frequency of energy.

There are some waves of frequency that we only look at the person and when we have trust, we look at the person, we know that person, he his. Gone with us through downs and low ups and downs. And we know that in rugby, we ha we have a saying it doesn't matter who stays in front of us, it matters only who's with us who's in the team.

[00:14:00] I'm not re I not remember the exact terms, but this is it. We don't care who's opponent it, it cares what team, who I have in my team. So if we are strength, we have strength, we have. We act as a team. We trust each other in the lowest moments in the rugby game. That makes all the difference because together we know how to react.

We just look, I just look at you, and then you know that I cannot cope with this really to run like a sprint to, to put the ball yeah. Down in rugby. And then I look at you, and then you immediately see and react because in in in sports, in a elite sports, you need to fast, react fast.

And then if you don't notice your colleague, your teammate, that he needs you, then you are lost. You lost the chance, and the team loses. And that's why trust and this energy. Uplifts more. And I had a meeting, I had [00:15:00] spoken in the Global Women's Summit recently about mitochondrias, the energy powerhouse of ourselves.

And I said there that no amount of mitochondria thrives in isolation and in team sports, we are not isolated. We have something that very few very few jobs have, yeah, team support. You can be manager, you can have team, but this team for athletes goes everywhere. And they're more like the same more, less, 1, 2, 3.

They are more or less there or not. But in in general, there's the same team that goes on and on years, maybe months. And then they thrive because mitochondria thrive together. It said it has, studies have shown that the mitochondrias where when they, when you, for example, Jeff have super mitochondria, super fuel, and then if I talk with you, it's contagious in a good way.

I [00:16:00] become your mitochondria and stimulates my mitochondria. So we can all, both I hear you. I hear you. At the same level. Level. Tell me, I hear you on mitochondria and some of the things you're talking about in the business world. If we talk about business leadership and we talk about trust, right?

In the business world we have seen massive reinventions in the way we have to think and also redefine and reinvent business to create new performance levels that will work through uncertainty, that will work through horrid terrains of overcoming adversity challenge. Okay. How have you seen sports innovation change in the same way?

Has there been radical rethinks about how we get athletes to perform bigger, better, stronger, or is it very much the same techniques that have been going over the decades? [00:17:00] Unfortunately is the same thing I hear every single year at the world Congresses, sports medicine or sports science. And that's why I'm a bit frustrated to hear the same medicine, the same therapies, the same aspect, perspective on muscular.

That's why we brought in my latest symposium highly known chiropractor from America, who has developed for example amazing technique that we didn't learn about it in the medical university and it works. I bring the innovations to, I collaborate with such, tremendous professionals that have developed on their own years of research also in Germany years of researching and years of clinical expertise.

Sure. To bringing up the latest, the you don't, I don't care what you eat, I don't care how much [00:18:00]you train. If you eat not the things that are good to you, to your intestine, then you can eat whatever veggies or proteins amount that doesn't come in through your intestinal tract because the intestinal tract, has anyone looked at your intestinal tract?

If it absorbs. We can, we need to look there first and then say, okay, you need that and that aspect. But let's look at your mitochondrias. Let's look on your production of energy at the cellular level. Can we go deeper then? Because in sports medicine is very important. The a TP production, the molecule of energy production.

Because if you don't have a TP, then you need your muscles need to regenerate. And two, they cannot uplift this effort. And then we, that's why in sports medicine is crucial to look at the mitochondrias. And I didn't see when I worked in high. [00:19:00] Okay. Sports medicine unfortunately I didn't see 10 this interest in mitochondrias.

We were all interested in tactic acid. We were all interested in, okay, we had an injury, let's do it fast. But no one really ever looked deep down why this muscle was injured, why what had produced was the cause. This is why our athletes taking I mean we, I remember the Olympics at Sochi when they were giving urinal tests to all of the athletes.

Are they looking at other supplements to take sometimes to enhance? Bodies doping. Yes. Yes. Anti-doping measures. Yes. Yes. Okay. This is another talk, the anti-doping. It's another domain we need to keep a healthy, clean sport and not cheat. Yeah. That's the main Yeah, exactly. Thing.

And of course it's really a lot of [00:20:00] financial effort to do that, to, to search every regulat athlete. Compliance. Exactly. I worked also with the World Rugby anti-Doping team. Yeah. I delivered some courses and I was happy to, to more to give awareness because a lot of athletes, they don't know that they're really, they're the only one responsible for what they take for the intake.

The meat can be exposed to drugs, to supplements. It was a case back in I think I don't remember when, but it was a big case when team at the World Championship was infected by the meat and no one really Yeah. Exactly, and those standards must also be prepared. It's it's lot of, so when you think about, when you think about anti-doping, you're getting into misinformation.

Mistrust. Exactly. Okay. And in the business world, we have a lot of misinformation and mistrust and, it's a very passionate subject, both [00:21:00] Scott and I, about how we how we live in the post-truth world and how we rebuild trust, not just in the respective industries, but also in societal.

And it's very much back to the same thing. We need to be able to. Be more transparent. We need better opens. We need to have that whole thing where we need to listen more, we need to be more empathetic, we need to be more compassionate, we need better understanding before we can really and genuinely move into better communication.

'cause I believe with better communication, we can all benefit and we can all benefit from, trusted communities, relationships, and collaborations. But it has to start with trust. And if we don't have trust, what have we got? What are we left with? Exactly. We cannot bid, build connections without trust.

Correct. Yeah, I think it comes back to what you're saying, Beatrice, and what you're saying, Jeff, about the information and understanding of [00:22:00] the impacts. And Samir is back having clear governance and agreed standards by which things are gonna be measured and the transparency about how we go about testing and how we go about putting those forward.

If we've got that, at least we're building trust in the process. 'cause people can see it and it's not too technical hidden. And that's, I think in business, you've got a, and it's quite often like businesses will say, oh, we've decided no and whatever it is, it's recruitment or whatever. Or you've gone for a loan and you've said no, and we're not gonna tell you why anyway.

Oh, thanks for that. What can I now do with that information then? Because there's a big lack of any explanation as a, then it becomes very much a distrusting and people create their own narrative around those stories. Yeah, a hundred percent. I couldn't agree more. I think that there's several things here.

I think that the world needs to go through a period of reinvention. [00:23:00] We've seen, yes, we've seen wars, we've seen geopolitics, we've seen new governments. Last year there was 80 plus new governments that turned up with new manifestos and change around regimes, taxations, policy, regulation. It affected macroeconomics in all levels.

And people need sustainability. And I think that, yes, what we were doing five years ago is obsolete. I totally agree with that. But the, where there needs to be better policy, better regulation in order to innovate I'm not talking about. To stop innovation because I think we need more innovation, but we're only going to get innovation if we can take people from isolation, loneliness, and working on oneself rather than collaborating in a team.

We need that new thinking. We need that new, the new creativity, innovation, and ideas to come into [00:24:00] the sports world and into medicine. We also need it in the business world. We need design led thinking and innovation, which really makes a difference to immediacy, medium term and short term objectiveness.

When you go through what economically we've been through in the last sort of 20 months what you bring is short-termism on everything and there's no long range planning. And I think that we understand that the trust model has definitely changed, but in order to get trust back, we need to reinvent.

Everything that's required to put the components Exactly and put the elements into a proper process that can be easy applied to the generations, because we're not dealing with old people all the time, but we are dealing with Gen Zs, millennials and baby boomers, et cetera. And significantly there are new generations being born, allegedly, every, from what I've read in the press.

So all of this [00:25:00] needs to be accommodated and it is behavior driven. Trust is an act of behavior, is an act of cognitive behavior and so forth. The intelligences that you talk about earlier I'm really strong on, 'cause I've written about this at great length. I think that yes, we need academia, we need the level of iq.

We need eq, which is emotional intelligence. You also talked about spiritual. And I know Duke University came up with decency intelligence, but there needs to be a lot more wisdom and knowledge that goes into this because it's not all about what AI or chat GDP spits out and hopefully works, and people can't challenge that.

It's about actually having humans that can actually say, actually AI and chat gp, dp or this white paper and that white paper, the thinking and the creativity. Look, Einstein never had ai any certainly didn't have DGP, right? But look, miraculously we had some [00:26:00] amazing things that came outta that, right?

When you think about it, right? So look and. Gravity. Gravity was formed without ai, it was Cambridge and Ashley, he couldn't do it. He couldn't do it at Cambridge. He was in a, he was in a Lincolnshire cottage in 1656, and suddenly he thought, I'm bored. It is COVID. He ha I Spanish flu on board.

So he created gravity. So the question is, the human brain can be trained like an AI or an algorithm. It can, it has got a lot more intelligence. But the fact is. We need to bring that out into the open that applies not just to sports and sports innovation, but it also definitely applies to the business world and at all levels from top down.

But ultimately the glue, as I talk about it, is the trust did intelligence. And I believe that the umbrella for that is holding all of the intelligence. And I think all of us human beings need to start developing these intelligences if we're going to get [00:27:00] nearer to that goal. That's my thinking anyway regarding this artificial intelligence that is rapidly evolving.

I had a talk in London and he came also to minister with Professor Matt Riman. He developed human intelligence application. We had some talks and I we concluded that the. Human this application that also in medicine are really useful. They only need, from my point of view, I told him yes, but the medical doctor needs to still remain and the medical doctor and this app of tremendous help when it is only one doctor, let's say, in a team needs to we need as medical doctors to see what benefits how this can support the athlete, but not just only the app.

It needs to come with a human experience. Also, the doctor, the someone else. I'm only referring to the sports athlete and the [00:28:00] sports medicine world. And we. Cannot let only human inte the artificial intelligence as high and as sophisticated and as rapid as it is only act alone does also need to be this bond from human, from empathic human.

And love that I love, I call it interconnect. Interconnected. Exactly. Interconnect. We need that interconnected interconnectedness. Yeah. Yeah. Course. And I think we, it's very important for the athletes to do that, to have this human, exactly what we spoke before, some minutes before, and then bring also.

The artificial intelligence was brilliant. Nowadays, I think if you look at AI and it's about what we do it doesn't replace or does it enhance, I think it enhance productivity in a lot of areas, but what it can't do, and I think this is where we are entering the age of the human age, where the differentiator for us is our ability for the compassion, the intelligence, the creativity that does not exist through computers, but the computers can help us, [00:29:00] and AI can help us do stuff.

As you say, it can speed up the process for the doctor, but at the end result, the doctor then with the empathy and the understanding and all that sort of stuff can then use that as a tool to help deliver better, a better, but even if we get the tool, Scott, which I totally agree with you by the way, wholeheartedly.

It's then if you don't have. The understanding or the listening or the engagement or the empathy and compassion. It's not going, people are not gonna engage with the tool. Yeah. They're gonna get scared at the picture and then, and because they don't trust it. 'cause they, yeah. When I look at design of thinking, in the medical world, I know it's different, right?

Because you'll do qualitative and quantitative and there's lots of research and papers written. But certainly from where we stand once we've done the basic analysis, okay. And we understand what needs to be done. We put people first at the center of our business innovation canvas because, and then we apply the technology and then [00:30:00] we've got, we can pivot.

Significant growth. We can't do one without the other. That interconnectedness between humans and between AI or quantum now, because every, we are talking quantum now and quantum physics in many of the new applications. And again, that's a thousand times faster than ai. And AI has been around for a long time.

It's, this is nothing new. Everyone's saying new ai, there's so much techno phobia, but now it's time for humans to start raising the bar. It's the time to step up and start learning, because humans now need to start questioning and challenging the data sets, the data patterns and the trends to be able to make it effective and use creativity and wisdom, intelligence to be able to put forward new ideas and new opportunities.

And I think the opportunities are vast, but not without the learnings. Yes, a tool. And then what's the best way to utilize that tool within the environment? Working [00:31:00] in with what we can do? What can it help me do better than and to enhance my productivity, my efficiency, whatever it is, it doesn't replace.

But if you ask a lawyer today, if you ask a lawyer that, I've got this great tool, and it'll give you a 10% extra time to be creative, I know what those people would be doing, they'd be using for their own downtime. Seriously. So it's that when you start talking about creativity, Google had a KPI in their organization many years ago where 15, 20% of their time would be just to go and have coffee and talk and just spend time with colleagues.

It was a way of, they increased, they pivoted creativity and growth as a direct result of having that as a KPI. They were forced to go to the call zone and play Billards and sit down and have coffee and just talk about what they're doing and being able to interconnect on different projects.

It was great. It was great. It was absolutely great. I'm a great believer that you need, you can only do so much on a screen. You can only do so much on a tool. You need human to human [00:32:00] where you can create and innovate. And even at IBM, we do an awful lot of spending time in boardrooms and spending time with our clients and actually with each other to actually offload ideas.

Ideas and it's a way forward. It's a way forward. It's not, it shouldn't be deemed as, oh God, I've gotta travel to London now I've gotta have a meeting. No, it's about making it fun. It's about making it enjoyable. And that's when the ideas, that's where the magic happens. I think it goes back to Dr.

Beatrice, what you said earlier about when somebody that you trust has that high level of energy and you're in the room with them, then that's is contagious. And then you feed my energy, I feed yours, and you just go, sorry. Did you say happiness? Happiness. We can do a whole thing on happiness. I've just written, I've just written about happiness.

I do think there's a, there's gotta be a direct correlation. You've done the research. I was going to look at the, doing a blog on happiness, trust, and productivity. High levels of [00:33:00] mitochondria and energy bring so much happiness. And I remember the time when I first felt this energy and I couldn't explain what was happening.

To me with the seeing the players also receiving their energy is a field of quantum. A quantum field. Also what Jeff said earlier, we are surrounded by energy molecules, electrons that interconnected with our body, that, that are interconnected with our bodies, with our field. And the moment we ignite this fire in us through our mitochondrias, something extraordinary happens and we just so to say, explode with happiness when we surround each other with high levels of energy.

That's what happens in stadiums. That's what happens when athletes football players, rugby players, any other players are in the stadium. You can't. Ask them how they felt. They [00:34:00] felt like gladiators. That's the mitochondrial level raising. And you can directly measure that what happens before you enter the stadium and how you live.

You live with something extraordinary in your body and you cannot explain exactly as as an athlete why to have that. Okay, it's adrenaline. Okay there this substances that your body makes, produces during this high levels of energy of movement of sports. But there's also something more, and we are just tapping into that.

And this is many times I've experienced this and me as a doctor, as a medical doctor, I could not explain what was that. And I go dive. Beat. Surely the mind is wired. Okay? It's wired. And sometimes, surely the brain needs to be rewired if you are going to change mindset. So if you are, let's say, [00:35:00] a mediocre rugby player to become a, of course, better rugby player, yes, there's an energetic set of prescriptions within that say you've gotta change your any levels, but equally, you've gotta re reprogram the mind.

If you're gonna become better, stronger, more effective, you have to be open to receive. That's the, you have to, that's why you have to be, to pay attention, to keep your focus as an athlete where you have to be. And then when you're focused and you know what you have to do and you not get distracted.

Or someone had a telephone in the next chair next to me and then I look and that, that's gone. That's your level of mindset. It's going down and it's not gonna receive the quantum field. The energy. Yeah. The electrons from the because yeah, we have receptors. And those receptors, you have must have them open and Yeah.

See Scott with Beatrice, [00:36:00] within one week you'll become Spartacus. We'll, we have in the, I'm Spartacus from the film itself. We have in, we have in ultra running, sparta loan. Oh. And it's one of the most hardest, the most difficult ultra running conditions to make for an athlete.

That is I've spoke a bit in my congresses, in my symposiums, and that's the distant that Sparta was made back then in from Athens to deliver this this, a really nice story behind this. And yes we have some athletes in Romania who did it, and they are extraordinary. Wow.

Coming that, there's 2, 2, 2 things I want one the most physically, I think is it Probably. No, it is definitely the most physically challenging thing I've ever done is run a marathon. And I use the word run very loosely by the way I completed it. And it was one of the most, I love it. [00:37:00] Love it.

Physically demanding it. The last five miles. Last five, the most challenging things I've ever done. But however, there's also, as, there's two points I wanna raise. One is another story I read. There was a woman who ran an ultra marathon this week, I think, and she finished three hours ahead of the next the closest man.

Wow. She was home before some of the athletes were crossing the line, like a hundred mile. She was something like three, two to three hours ahead of the quickest man and five hours ahead of the second place woman. Lovely. And she was at home having dinner. That's the woman. Power of women.

Power of women. No, he's not woman. That sounds to me like that's the power of one. Doesn't matter who's that's somebody whose mindset one focused woman. One. No. One one's very focused woman. Yeah. I love it. Love it. Dr. Bishop, I just wanna go back to something that you said was quite interesting about like athletes going into stadiums, whatever it is, whether it's a rugby stadium, NFL, football, whatever it is.

So [00:38:00] do you think that during COVID, that when teams were playing in empty stadiums, they don't have that same experience as they would if the stadium's full and they've got 50, 60, 70, 80,000, however many people cheering them on. Do you think that may have been one of the re reasons? We had some, what we would probably call unusual results or unexpected results in team sports through that COVID experience where people were playing team sports again, where they had to play in an empty stadia.

Absolutely. I talked with athletes and we saw also reports on television, and they were all experiencing this unusual feeling when they're, they were playing. It was not the same feeling. And we are going back to the energy levels that the stadium brings to the gladiators in to the athletes playing.

It has a humongous role. It has a huge role on the mentality [00:39:00] of the motivation for the athletes when they, it's something brilliant happens. They come to see you and when you, as the player, as an athlete train hard when no one sees you, it's your. You come there to show your, what you have worked, and then to come there and to not show that, but just it's play in the backyard.

They just use this words. Some of the athletes I've talked to, they just use the same words. It was nothing like we did, it was just like we played alone in the backyard and no one was watching. No one it knew and we did our own thing and that was it. And then we said goodbye and then we left.

But that's, and difference. I've gotta say I've gotta agree with that, right? I have to agree with that because when I was at school, when I was a young man, okay, I was actually the fastest runner in the school at the time, and they always used to put me into the 100 meters, [00:40:00] 400 meters, never the 1500.

But then they'd put me always last at the baton. And the adrenaline buzz that I had from coming back from losing to winning right, was phenomenal, right? It's just, I can't, I can always remember it. Also, I can hear the shouting in my ears when coming down to the finish line, and you don't forget it, right?

You don't forget it. It was, it's quite incredible. So I understand, I totally get the adrenaline rushes that you'll get and winning. The sports athletes are not athletes for one other reason. They want to win. Male or female want to win, there's a will and that inner desire look, as an author, I've always said that the best writings I've ever done is straight from the heart because my heart explodes and it affects me.

It's cathartic, it all comes out. My first book was all about that, and I said, there's no point writing if you don't have purpose. These guys would go, these guys, whether they're running, swimming, a triathlon or whatever it might be, fact is [00:41:00] they're winning. I met sports aid. I met a very, a young man who wanted to, who would've been in the England rugby team.

He had a car accident. Somebody wrote, run him over, and he said. I am not going to give up rugby. And he became the most successful disabled rugby player in the uk. I met him, I had the privilege to actually meet him. His lovely, his mindset and his determination. His tenacity, right? You've got to I tell you, why can't we have that in the business world with people?

Not, instead of saying, how much are you gonna pay me? Before you go to the interview, why don't you actually sit through the interview and then tell them how you are gonna add value and how your determination, your passion, and your tenacity for what you are doing is gonna change the world, right?

Because these athletes are all about that. Yeah. I'm sorry. I want to be number one. I'm gonna change the world. And their mindset, we're back to what Dr. Beatrice said earlier [00:42:00] about mindset. And I say mindset is everything. Mindsets. First I want to go add there exactly what you said. Why in this business and when team managers look for employees, they need to look with the same mindset and the same determination and the same energy levels and why they want to do that.

Yeah. And there's just really easy trial to triage to make. Yes. When you find the motivation and you have the specific questions, why do you want it? What's important for you? Yeah. And you can decide, and you cannot lose that so much time with other questions you need. Like in medicine, like in mitochondrial level, you go to the basic, and then when you find your community, when you find your so called tribe, then that's when the magic happens because you are only have determinated people, tenacious people, like as you and you surround yourself.

Between three and five [00:43:00] and se seven people with the same strong mindset. There won't be anyone who will tell you in that group, oh, you do too much. Why are we working until 7:00 PM There's gonna be, and I, when I was in corporate and I did a, I, I was CEO Global, C-M-O-C-C-O, I had a, I had an ethos.

I was always first in the building last to leave, right? As I built this emotional intelligence and the vision, the mission, the values, and I brought that into the organization, you suddenly start seeing people turning up the work the same time as. And leaving the same time, they wouldn't leave their desk.

They were there committed to the project. They weren't gonna just leave their colleagues. And 'cause you build that whole openness together and together we're winning as one, not as individuals. Yes. And okay. And this was very much about winning. And we did win. I took that business, that one European business, I took that business from 8 million to [00:44:00] 250 million in two and a half years.

I then took the other organization to the first, their first billion in revenue. But I applied the same techniques, the same methodology. Now I'm not saying all of those techniques would work today, but I know from experience that a lot of those techniques with people first would work. I think the techniques might change 'cause we've changed.

But the principles that drive those techniques, the principles Correct. The guiding principles. No, I agree. I'd say the same. Then we adapt the techniques to meet those principles. Totally. Just one question I wanna, when we're finishing because it's, again, it's about linking this to business, which is, and trust and leadership.

And I'll go back to what you were saying about, and it really is when you talk to people in sport, they're so clear about what that, why they're doing what they're doing. They are so clear. That gives them the ability to focus, prioritize and say, I think there was something, isn't it the British rowing team, I think it was team one of the Olympics.

They were said and they got criticized 'cause they weren't they didn't [00:45:00] attend one of the ceremonies where it was the opening or closing. I remember that. I do remember that. And they said, why didn't you attend? He said, attending that does not help us win the medal. That was complete laser focus. If it's not gonna help exactly goal, we're not wasting our time and our energy doing it, we'd be better suited.

Going through our race plan, doing this that time could be better suited to delivering our goals. That's laser focus. And you might say sometimes we might need a little bit, but, and again, when you talk about the science, I'm just gonna go back to then culture, which again, I think is a bit of the mindset.

Let's look at culture around these teams where you said you go to places, everyone who's, so you've got a team playing. So you were with the, was it the Georgia rugby team? A very successful rugby team in Europe. The best, the most successful underneath the Six Nations. Exactly. Journey. Yeah. The most. And knocking on the door and be one of the reasons we will probably in the next five, 10 years have promotion and demotion from the six nations because George R in [00:46:00] every Exactly.

To the people underneath. I agree. But that's a team of 15. So say the squad's, 23 players, it's not 23 players who actually are delivering that. So an organization might be your sales team or other people on the ground floor, but the whole. The whole structure around that has to be aligned. Like in, as you talk about the culture of the business, you delivered that result on the pitch, on that day, on that Saturday, whatever else.

It's absolutely. I had the privilege to when I first started in rugby, in world rugby and with rugby Romania, some years ago, I happened to be in the locker room treating athlete. And I was there hearing, they had a meeting after the break. They were losing, Romania was losing. I don't remember who they were playing.

We, we were abroad, we were someone in Europe. And I remember the coach back then said to the players, I don't care who you are, what you have, problems in your house. [00:47:00] You leave them in this locker, and when you go outside on the on the stadium, you have no mother, no father, no. Tomorrow, no.

Present, no, nothing. You just play to win. And that that made me reflect many years. And I was happy to see that because also in my job as a medical doctor, I have no boundaries. I don't think of my private, sector, when I'm working, I'm so laser focused. I'm so ruthless. And then I saw this parallel between me and the sports, the athletes, what they do on the field.

And that I liked it very much because it put it into words what I do. And sometimes I think to myself maybe I'm too much into my work. Too much there. And then I just saw it's not about too much. It's about laser focus and doing what you really want. And that's it's nowhere to go until success.

It's it's nothing less than success, a successful road, in my opinion, if you're ruthless with your [00:48:00] focus. And I wanted to add that. I think there's a saying there. I love my quotes as well. I've heard it. I says where focus goes, energy flows. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah I'd like to add, I think it's important.

When I was in banking, I was a very passionate, driven, smart banker which is a very unusual combination because in those days, bankers were deemed as incredibly boring and very in the box and structured. And I was always outta the box thinking when I was a banker. But we did incredible things when I was in, when I had a corporate career globally and internationally.

And bearing in mind I've worked across 121 countries. I'm very driven. I'm very laser focused as you described. And I do understand some of the pain points. Everyone says they're busy and I would always question busy doing what? When we started, what got me was, I've got a very curious mind and super intelligent mind.

I've got a million things going on in my mind, or 24 7. In fact, when I go to reiki, my reiki masters [00:49:00] always saying, God, and I still, I've got real problems with this. Your powerhouse is just too much, right? Because it never calms down. But the bottom line was, bottom line is always is, look.

Productivity's down. I put I in business and I want to talk about business and I'll come back to sports, but we've still got this big problem in leadership. We've got the wrong people in the wrong royals. It's no longer about staying with the program and getting your bonus and then leaving. 'cause shareholders require more.

They require change. We know that whether we look at McKinsey, PWC, Bain, Oliver, Wiley, the reports speak for themselves. 84% of our leaders can just stand still and stand still as far as I'm concerned. Is quicksand okay? Transformation. 70% of all transformations fail at billions and billions of dollars.

Let's not talk about toxic or NA environments in, in, in corporations, because that's even [00:50:00]worse. We've got about 6% of the global market of chief executive officers that can actually influence culture. Pivot, creativity, innovation, and actually grow their talent acquisition to bigger, better, bolder, and stronger performances.

Now, this is something I am very passionate about and I keep going back to the question we have to business reinvent. There's no point training the same stuff to the same people that have an inability to action or execute. We, everyone's great at words. I've ne I don't, anybody that knows me knows that I execute.

I'm about action. I get things done. And the problem you've got is we can't no longer just keep talking. We've gotta start executing. And there's an awful lot of chief executive officers, male and female, that are getting paid lots of money and they're not delivering a thing. And so I think that [00:51:00] radically has got to change.

I think we're in an era right now where we're going back to human era, but we're going back to a new human era, and I think the new human era of leadership is about a new leader, okay? With new experiences, new traits, the ability to upskill their people, make their people far more intelligent, and to actually start transforming and pivoting within business has to be a mandate for every executive board to make that they should be succession planning, where people do not have the skills they need to step aside that this new leadership that I talk about in the CEO role and the C-suite role, because end of the day it's top down culture can only come from the board top down and not the other way around.

Culture is a glue. You can talk about culture of innovation, culture of risk, culture of finance, culture [00:52:00] of, product innovation whatever it might be. Yes, we know we've got a serious contention with a very long list of things that need to be done on a daily basis. But with the right leader, we can start executing that list and you can start making business improvements.

You can start actually creating growth. You can start actually inspiring people. Stephen Covey wrote a book called Trust and Inspire, probably one of the best books that I've read in a long time. But he talks all about why it's important that you've got skills and competencies, builds into credibility and integrity, and your people need to see that you are a true leader.

A true leader doesn't just talk a true leader. Change, and we've been very bad at actually not making the changes that are needed. No wonder we've got a productivity hole of 8.8 trillion globally and internationally, [00:53:00] right? We have got an engagement problem because people can't hide anymore, right? You can't hide your insecurities.

You can't hide your lack of skills. Look, when I became a chief executive officer of a large business for the very first time, I didn't have all the answers. I didn't have all the skills. I'll tell you what I did have. I had great people around me. I had a great team with me on the same journey. The teamwork, and I made it collaborative.

I wasn't insecure about my position. I was like what you gonna do to me? Fire me. Carry on. If you wanna fire me, right? I don't care. But I was building a business. I was taking that business from 8 million to 250 million in just under two and a half years after the launch. That's a big ask. I did it.

Why did I do it? Because I had the culture, because I had the people and because I got competence and skill behind the business. Transformation. No more, no less. We've gotta get rid of these insecurities. You've gotta get rid of this nasty kind of toxic environment. The ego. The ego, [00:54:00] right? The ego's gotta change.

Look, these are, should be basic one oh ones, but they're not lovely, unfortunately. And then there's no re no wonder why we've got a communication problem with people and why we can't have a human first. Because, people are afraid to actually speak out. I've always said somebody put their hands up at the back of the room.

Excuse me sir. Madam, please step this way. You've probably got something good to say. Why don't you join in with this executive group and why don't you tell me what you are thinking? Because inclusion to me has always been important. I always had the open door office. As soon as one of my directors or one of my MDs would come in, I would down towards, irrespective of what was going on.

I wasn't door closed, looking at spreadsheets, wa waiting for my eyes to dis dissipate. I was getting on with my people and I was getting the engine moving. And it doesn't matter how many hours I de put I spent at the office. Yeah. And those days it was the office. And the fact is it was getting the job done.

The job done. These are basics, [00:55:00] but this is some of the problems we've got and it's got to change. Boards have gotta wake up. That culture matters. Strategy doesn't eat culture for breakfast, as Mr. Druck has said, right? It doesn't. It doesn't. And I think that means a change in personnel.

And I've never been afraid in a C-Suite position to make a change in personnel if it was right for the business and more importantly, right? For the shareholders. You've got to create collaboration. You've got to create interconnectedness. You've got to have everybody on the same page. Vision, mission, values, tone of voice, personality trait, right?

That has to run through as a common language and philosophy within the organization. You gotta eat it, speak it, and breathe it, not talk about it, right? And just put it on a C drive and hope it works. It doesn't work on a C drive, it doesn't work on email. People don't read emails. Okay. [00:56:00] People want the human experience.

I've got clear research that proves that we need to start talking and interacting with our people. Okay? If we want a future short-termism, forget it. We can create models, processes for immediacy. Yes, we've got to be building long range planning around mid midsize objectiveness and long term objectiveness.

If we're going to get to the end goal, and I'm sorry, but everyone's worried about their job. Sorry, we, nothing new, right? Let's start executing. Let's move from just basic discussion. Let's apply these new techniques, these innovations. Let's build culture of innovation.

Let's build trust with one another and each other. And let's change not just business, not just sports. Let's change societal for a better impact and for a better world.

I can't top that, so I'm gonna leave [00:57:00] you. That could be a great place to finish the old podcast. I think. I can't really top that. Next time we do a podcast, Jeff, I'll just introduce you and you can just run it and I'll just see that now at the, thank you very much. I thought I was being good today. I was being quiet.

Yeah, I know I was. I was relatively impressed by normal standards. So again, thank you very much for your time, Jeff and Dr. Beatrice. So I will add one more thing though. There's a quote of, I do wanna share this. Okay. Okay. Vince Lombardi, I love this and this, I know Beatrice will definitely have something to say about this.

Winning is not a something, sometime thing, it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while. You don't do things right once in a while. You do them all right all the time because winning is a habit, unfortunately. So I was losing. It is, I think, isn't it Jack Nicholson says, strangely enough, the more I practice the luckier I seem to get.

Lovely. I love it. Okay, so Dr. Beatriz, you now have, which is highly unusual with Jeff in the room, the [00:58:00] ability to have the last word. I love that he said he has so many ideas and some people might find that too much or too exhausting. I don't agree. I have also so many ideas, but when you collaborate with exactly a person who has the same creative brain as you, there won't be anyone who you will meet and say, you two are having too many ideas.

You will bond together, you'll connect together, and then you are gonna be unstoppable. That's what I think, and I, that's crucial to lead in business and innovations also. So it's about, we say that what did we learn from business and innovation, leadership and trust. And I think the key thing that's taken away from me is just understand the energy required and it's about that alignment and getting people together on the same page.

Exactly. And then feed off that energy that you can Yeah I won't say a word 'cause I don't want the last word. You just have, but [00:59:00] there we go. And here is lovely ladies and gentlemen end of the lesson. So again, thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Scott.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. You are welcome.